Around the World in 80 Books

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of our World Eco-fiction Series, I present "Around the World in 80 Books: A Guide to Ecological and Climate Themes in Fiction," an article at Medium.com. Themes include harsh survival, advocacy, veneration of the world around us, the slow apocalypse, the haunted, the weird, and the psychological. It's an eclectic and diverse range of stories, set around the world, on every continent. Also, Dragonfly is blending the original spotlight on climate change authors with the newer world fiction series, now that these similar author spotlights are on the same domain.

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The Seeds, David Aja and Ann Nocenti

A new four-issue series, by award-winning artist David Aja (Hawkeye, Immortal Iron Fist) and filmmaker, journalist, and comics writer Ann Nocenti (Daredevil, Catwoman)…An eco-fiction tech-thriller where flora and fauna have begun to mutate, The Seeds is also a story of love beyond race and gender, and of the resilience of both human and animal kind.

David Ajá Fernández is a Spanish comics illustrator, best known for his work on The Immortal Iron Fist, Hawkeye, and Daredevil. His style is reminiscent of Jim Steranko.

Ann Nocenti is most noted as an editor for Marvel Comics, for whom she edited New Mutants and The Uncanny X-Men. She made her comics writing debut on a brief run of Spider-Woman (#47-50) and subsequently wrote a long run of Daredevil (1st series) #236-291 (minus #237) from 1986 to 1991, directly following on from Frank Miller’s definitive Born Again storyline. She also wrote the 1986 Longshot limited series for Marvel, and in the same year produced the Someplace Strange graphic novel in collaboration with artist John Bolton. She wrote “the Inhumans Graphic Novel” in 1988. In 1993, she wrote the 16-issue run of Kid Eternity for the DC Comics imprint Vertigo.

Official press release from Comics Beat:

MILWAUKIE, Ore., (April 5, 2018)—Today, Dark Horse is pleased to reveal art from Ann Nocenti and David Aja’s The Seeds #1! The Seeds is a new four-issue series by award-winning artist David Aja (Hawkeye, Immortal Iron Fist) and filmmaker, journalist, and comics writer Ann Nocenti (Daredevil, Catwoman). Girl meets alien meets journalist in this eco-thriller love story where fact-based reporting is gasping its last breath, and Mother Nature already has other plans. And what’s with bees? What do they know that we don’t?

The rich have built walls around their wealth and scramble into escape rockets. The romantic and the ruthless cross over into the lawless wilds of Zone-B. A few cantankerous aliens have come to collect the last dregs of humanity’s essence for the celestial embryo bank. One of them falls in love.

The Seeds follows Astra, an idealistic journalist who stumbles into the story of a lifetime, only to realize that if she reports it, she’ll destroy the last hope of a dying world. How far will she go to get her story?

The Seeds #1 goes on sale August 1, 2018, and is available for preorder at your local comic shop.

Quotes

Ursula Le Guin is so important, because she pushed the idea that science fiction, or speculative fiction, can be a space for being really thoughtful, and for really exploring ideas. And also for daring to imagine a version of us that is better—and, in some ways, worse—than our present selves. I think she was unmatched. She was a great novelist, and a great evangelist for the novel. Earthsea is a huge influence, as is The Dispossessed. –Marlon James